Murder Outside 221B
by ToneeLabradeen
Summary: John discovers a body when fetching the morning paper, and the investigation takes an unexpected turn when the two become trapped in an elevator.


"Sherlock, where's the jam I bought yesterday?" John Watson was rooting around in the refrigerator of 221B Baker Street, looking for the small jar of raspberry jam he'd brought home the day before. He didn't get an immediate response. "Sherlock?"

"It was taking up too much room, I needed space for my experiments," Sherlock Holmes replied from his seat at the table, where he was looking through comments on his blog, trying to find a case worth his time. "I asked if you would mind."

"You asked if I would mind you cleaning out the fridge," John replied, trying to keep himself patient. "I said fine, but leave the jam because I just got it, and I asked you to get some milk, which I'm going to assume you didn't do."

"You asked me to get milk?" Sherlock replied, and John just groaned in response, heading into the living room to flop on the couch in exasperation. After a few moments, the doctor started to go for the morning paper that wasn't actually on the coffee table yet. He groaned to himself and got up from the couch, starting to head for the door, still wearing his pyjamas and robe. Sherlock didn't notice, absorbed as he was in what he was doing. John descended the stairs to the door of the flat and opened it, expecting nothing more than the morning paper on a quiet sidewalk. The paper was there, but that wasn't the only thing there. Next to the paper, and, in fact, still slowly bleeding on it, was what appeared to be a dead body.

"You have got to be kidding me," John breathed out, unable to really react for a moment until his medical training kicked in and he knelt next to the body, by the head, and felt for a pulse. Nothing. Judging by the amount of blood on the ground and soaked into the morning paper, resuscitation was no use. John knew he should call the police, but he also knew that if he called the police without telling Sherlock first, he'd never hear the end of it, so he went back upstairs – leaving the bloodsoaked paper – and stood in the doorway, an eyebrow raised at his flatmate, who was still thoroughly absorbed in his blog comments. "Sherlock, there's something interesting outside."

"It can wait," the detective replied, not even looking up from his screen. John sighed.

"There's a dead body outside our flat, and nobody's even called the police yet," the doctor said plainly, knowing that this would get the detective's attention. Sure enough, Sherlock's head whipped up, a mixture of pure glee and piqued interest on his face.

"And you checked for a pulse already! Come on, let's have a look," Sherlock said, already halfway out the door by the time he finished. John sighed, rolled his eyes, and followed, knowing that he probably shouldn't have said anything until he had called the police. At least Sherlock would be happy being able to get to the body before the police could get a chance to muck up the crime scene. John knew better than to point out that the detective was only wearing his robe and pyjama bottoms, and as he reached the body on the early morning street, Sherlock was already deep into figuring out who the person was. It didn't take him long, either.

"This is a government official, not particularly powerful, but not insignificant, either," the brunette said, looking at an ID card he'd pilfered from the official's pocket. "Mycroft will almost certainly get involved once the police are called…do we really have to call them, John?"

"Do you want to get arrested and thrown in jail for obscuring a murder?" the doctor replied, already going back inside for the phone. "I'll see what I can do about Mycroft, though, if you're really that concerned about him."

Twenty minutes later, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, and Mycroft Holmes were sitting inside 221B Baker Street, the Holmes brothers staring stubbornly at John, as if the doctor were supposed to relay messages between them from the same room.

"You're both being very immature about this," the shorter man said after several minutes of intense Holmes staring. "Maybe if you work together on this, it'll get solved much more quickly."

"He'll only slow me down," Sherlock groaned in reply, as if it were absurd that John would even _suggest_ working with Mycroft, who raised an eyebrow.

"He wouldn't bother following any kind of legal procedure," the elder Holmes said, "which I am obligated to follow, so really, he would slow me down." Sherlock scoffed at the comment. "Something to say, Sherlock?"

"No, not at all," Sherlock said, though it was obvious there was plenty he wanted to say. Everybody in the room knew what it was, though. John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"No matter how quickly this gets solved, it's going to be a long case," the doctor muttered. "And I'm going to want to kill any person I know with the last name Holmes."

"Sherlock, I trust your judgment on things like this, but how on _earth_ do you know it's an assassination?"

"The assassin didn't bother to hide the body, didn't attempt any kind of cleanup, didn't remove any form of identification of the body…the assassin wanted him to be found, wanted people to see him. It was a statement."

"Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, saw something he shouldn't have, and got taken out of the picture."

"If that was the case, there would have been footprints in the blood. The assassin was careful not to step in it. He came up behind the victim, killed him, and left without getting a drop of blood on himself."

John had long since given up attempting to alert the brothers that he was leaving the room; he simply got up and left to distract himself with whatever distraction he could think of, and at that particular moment, it was his thirteenth cup of coffee that day. When he reentered the room and they were still arguing on the same point, he growled to himself.

"Would you both SHUT UP?" the doctor shouted, catching the attention of both Sherlock and Mycroft immediately. "How about instead of trying to prove each other wrong at every turn, you try to prove each other right? Try to help each other? You're both brilliant, this will go much more quickly if you just work together. Besides, we're running out of coffee for me to leave the room to get." Sherlock rolled his eyes, obviously offended by John's lumping him in with Mycroft.

"He's not brilliant," the detective dismissed, looking his brother directly in the eye. "He's average, at best."

"Well, Sherlock, it'll be less of an annoyance if you actually try to work with him instead of against him," John replied, trying to be as patient as he could manage. "It would be much less grating on everyone's nerves." Once again, Sherlock rolled his eyes, but thankfully said nothing further on the topic for the day. As Mycroft left the flat later that day, he told the pair to meet him in his office the next morning to discuss their next move. John managed to convince Sherlock to actually go to the meeting, and they left earlier than necessary, to avoid being chewed out for being late.

"You really need to be better about working with Mycroft," John said, for probably the tenth time that morning alone. "You're being very childish about it, and even if he's not as smart as you, he can help, you know."

"That's not important right now," Sherlock replied, his tone almost absent, but John knew what that meant and didn't bother asking what it was. "We haven't moved from the third floor for two whole minutes, but the doors haven't opened…"

"Are you saying we're trapped in here?" John asked, looking around in exasperation. "That's just great. And I'll bet you're going to tell me that Mycroft orchestrated it, aren't you?"

"That's exactly it," Sherlock insisted. "He just wanted to get me out of the way so he could follow his own leads, so he trapped us…but how did he know which elevator we were in…? You're not bugged, are you? You're not telling him what route we took?"

"Sherlock, think for a moment here, you're jumping to conclusions, which isn't like you," John said, gesturing to a top corner of the elevator. "There are security cameras _everywhere_. This _is_ a government facility, after all, it would have been easy for him to find out which elevator was ours and trap us inside. You've been acting like such a child, I'm not surprised he wanted to get you out of the way for a while, honestly." But Sherlock was ignoring him.

"There's got to be a way to get the doors open," Sherlock muttered, already looking over the array of buttons he could press. With an exasperated sigh, John sat himself in the far corner, half-glaring at his flat-share. After several minutes of Sherlock muttering to himself about which buttons would do what for them (or rather, how many buttons wouldn't do a damn thing), John buried his face in his hands.

"You're a right git, Sherlock," the doctor said, causing Sherlock to pause and give John a quizzical look. "With all your smarts and your deducing…you're a right git."

"What relevance does this—"

"You're so brilliant, but you really are thick," John sighed out, getting up from his spot on the floor and going over to the detective, grabbing the front of his ubiquitous trench coat and yanking him down to crash their lips together. As soon as he had the detective's lips, he snagged one arm around the taller man's neck, the other around his waist, and dragged him close, nipping at Sherlock's lower lip and running his tongue along the teeth marks. As soon as the brunette's mouth was open against his, John slipped his tongue in, turning the hungry, angry kiss into a hungry, angry snog. He felt Sherlock's hands grab his waist, like a reflex left over from his having purged himself of all sexual distractions, but didn't really register that Sherlock was kissing him back. All John could think about was that he had finally done it, finally snogged Sherlock. Maybe now he could get over this stupid crush he'd developed. As soon as they separated, Sherlock went back to trying to figure out how to get them out of the elevator, as if nothing had happened in between John's initial interruption and that moment. They did, eventually, get out of the elevator – with confirmation that it was Mycroft who'd locked them inside and that it was, indeed, an assassination case – and for the rest of the case, there was no interference on Mycroft's part.

A week later, with the assassin behind bars and awaiting trial, John and Sherlock sat in 221B, John on his laptop on the couch, Sherlock at the table reading the newspaper, when John suddenly looked up.

"I've been getting a lot of comments on my post about the assassination," he said, trying to gently segue into what he wanted to say about the kiss.

"The only thing notable about that case was Mycroft's interference with it," Sherlock added, in an offhand kind of way that somehow managed to push the wrong button for John.

"What the bloody hell, Sherlock! It's no wonder you don't have friends!" He let out an exasperated half-growl and looked back at his laptop screen despite Sherlock's rare, bewildered expression.

"What relevance does that have?" Sherlock asked, not really understanding what John meant. The doctor groaned to himself, rolled his eyes, and looked up at the detective, trying to gauge whether he really didn't understand before finally answering.

"When someone snogs you on an elevator out of the blue, you don't just go around ignoring it, you don't just _forget_ about it, you _talk_ about it and what it means!" Sherlock blinked a couple of times, as if processing why this would upset John so much.

"I thought it was clear from my reaction at the time that I reciprocated the sentiment which drove your actions despite my difficulty with sentiment, and I had assumed that you would continue with such attentions on your own," the detective explained, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. John's expression melted from seriously pissed off to shocked, and he stayed where he was, just sitting like that, for several moments, before he finally set his laptop on the coffee table and got up. He went over to Sherlock, who'd gone back to reading his paper, placed a hand on either side of the detective's face, and pressed their lips together for the second time. This was much gentler than that first time, much less angry, and he wanted to savor it this time. He gently threaded his fingers into the detective's curly dark hair, gently using this contact to get Sherlock on his feet and over to the couch. John maneuvered his detective so that Sherlock was lying on his back with the doctor nestled between his legs, never breaking the contact of that kiss. When they were situated, John ran his tongue along Sherlock's bottom lip, and once permission had been granted, he slipped his tongue into Sherlock's mouth, trying to memorize the feel of it.

After a short while of trying to memorize Sherlock in this way, John could feel his own erection growing uncomfortable in the tight confines of his trousers. He ground his hips against Sherlock's, drawing a small gasp from the taller man. John could feel the beginning of Sherlock's erection, and ground their hips together, trying to encourage the detective to let himself become aroused. He ground their hips together again, and felt his own erection straining its confines almost to the point of pain. He needed to get out of his damn clothes…he pulled away from Sherlock's mouth only and yanked his jumper over his head, tossing it aside and beginning to undo his trousers. Once he had them open, allowing for some relief of the pain, he leaned forward and started to push Sherlock's shirt up his torso, exposing the detective's sweet pale flesh. John was too impatient to deal with the buttons, and was for once glad that Sherlock never did them up all the way, as it allowed him to simply push the shirt completely off of the brunette and bring their lips together again, kissing and suckling and enjoying. John then managed to wriggle himself out of his trousers, leaving himself in just his bright red pants, and began to undo Sherlock's trousers. They had both managed to develop full erections, and John could only imagine what Sherlock's tight trousers were doing to the detective. Working as quickly as he could, John separated their lips and worked Sherlock's trousers open, removing himself from between the detective's glorious legs just long enough to get the trousers off before situating himself right back where he had been before, grinding their barely-contained erections together again.

"John…" That one syllable was so uncharacteristically breathless, so beyond Sherlock, that John could scarcely believe the sound to be real. But it was, and it seemed to indicate that Sherlock knew where John was trying to go and agreed wholeheartedly. That was all the encouragement John needed to pick up the pace even more. He practically tore their pants from their hips and reached one hand between Sherlock's legs, teasing at the detective's entrance with a finger to relax it before pushing that one finger in, waiting for the muscles to relax again and bringing his lips to the side of Sherlock's neck, suckling and gently nibbling on the perfect pale skin. Sherlock moaned aloud under these attentions, his control over his reactions beginning to break. When he felt that the detective was relaxed enough, John inserted a second finger, scissoring the two fingers and gently pumping them back and forth, before removing them completely and positioning the head of his erection where his fingers had previously been.

"This is going to hurt a little, and for that, I'm sorry," John murmured against Sherlock's neck, feeling his erection throb almost painfully with need. "But it won't hurt for long, I promise…" He waited another moment before gently, slowly, pushing himself inside, groaning at the feeling of Sherlock's body stretching to fit around him. He heard Sherlock give a small hiss of pain, and he stopped for a moment to allow the detective to adjust before continuing to sheath himself inside the detective's delicious arse. He paused again when he was all the way inside before beginning to rock his hips, slowly building up a rhythm. It only took a few thrusts for Sherlock's slightly pained grunts to turn to pleasured moans, and the detective brought John's lips back to his, trying to use that to control his body's reactions to what was happening. He kissed with a need he didn't expect, and this unexpected need brought John's rhythm to a frenzy, and with that frenzy, Sherlock wrapped his arms tightly around John's shoulders, clinging desperately to what he had previously known about himself. Too soon, they were both screaming each other's name, John spilling himself deep within Sherlock, the detective smearing their stomachs with his release. When the final waves of orgasm had passed through them and John had pulled his softening penis out of Sherlock's stretched entrance, they managed by mutual unspoken consent to curl up together on the couch, holding each other close.

* * *

**Note: I received a review critiquing the sex scene near the end, telling me to do my research next time, along with other critiques, and I'm the kind of person to take things like that personally. While I know that this one was not very well-written, I feel the need to justify myself in saying that other sex scenes I have written have involved the use of lube and condoms. This fic was written very quickly because the idea was plaguing me for quite a long time and refused to leave my head without my writing it down. I appreciate reviews with constructive criticism, but this one was written with an edge of meanness to it, and it makes it easier to take when constructive criticism is presented with good intentions and not just the need to critique.**


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